"The stories never said why she was wicked. It was enough to be an old woman, enough to be all alone, enough to look strange because you have no teeth. It was enough to be called a witch. If it came to that, the book never gave you the evidence of anything. It talked about "a handsome prince"... was he really, or was it just because he was a prince that people called handsome? As for "a girl who was as beautiful as the day was long"... well, which day? In midwinter it hardly ever got light! The stories don't want you to think, they just wanted you to believe what you were told..."
— Terry Pratchett (The Wee Free Men)

"* Do you know what it feels like to be aware of every star, every blade of grass? Yes. You do. You call it "opening your eyes again." But you do it for a moment. We have done it for eternity. No sleep, no rest, just endless... endless experience, endless awareness. Of everything. All the time. How we envy you, envy you! Lucky humans, who can close your minds to the endless deeps of space! You have this thing you call... boredom? That is the rarest talent in the universe! We heard a song — it went "Twinkle twinkle little star...." What power! What wondrous power! You can take a billion trillion tons of flaming matter, a furnace of unimaginable strength, and turn it into a little song for children! You build little worlds, little stories, little shells around your minds, and that keeps infinity at bay and allows you to wake up in the morning without screaming!"
— Terry Pratchett (A Hat Full of Sky)

"'All right,' said Susan. 'I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable.
REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE
'Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little-
YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES
'So we can believe the big ones?
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING
'They're not the same at all!
YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET--
Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME... SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED
'Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point---
MY POINT EXACTLY"
— Terry Pratchett (Hogfather)

"In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in that very moment when I love them.... I destroy them."
— Orson Scott Card (Ender's Game)

""An enemy, Ender Wiggin," whispered the old man. "I am your enemy, the first one you've ever had who was smarter than you. There is no teacher but the enemy. No one but the enemy will tell you what the enemy is going to do. No one but the enemy will ever teach you how to destroy and conquer. Only the enemy shows you where you are weak. Only the enemy tells you where he is strong. And the rules of the game are what you can do to him and what you can stop him from doing to you. I am your enemy from now on. From now on I am your teacher.""
— Orson Scott Card (Ender's Game)

"Since when do you have to tell the enemy when he has won"
— Orson Scott Card (Ender's Game)

"# So you chose not to be part of the bands of children who group together for the sole purpose of excluding others, and people look at you and say, poor girl, she’s so isolated, but you know a secret, you know who you really are. You are the one human being who is capable of understanding the alien mind, because you are the alien mind; you know what it is to be unhuman because there’s never been any human group that gave you credentials as a bona fide homo sapien
# [He] wondered if it was already too late to teach her how to be a human"
— Orson Scott Card (Speaker for the Dead)

"”When you really know somebody you can’t hate them” “Or maybe it’s just that you can’t really know them until you stop hating them”
“Is that a circular paradox? Dom Cristao says that most truth can only be expressed in circular paradoxes”
“I don’t think it has anything to do with truth, it’s just cause and effect. We can never sort them out. Science refuses to admit any cause except the first cause – knock down one domino, the one next to it also falls. But when it comes to human beings, the only type of cause that matters is the final cause, the purpose. What a person had in mind. Once you know what people really want, you can't hate them anymore. You can fear them, but you can't hate them, because you can always find the same desires in your own heart.""
— Orson Scott Card (Speaker for the Dead)

"I think the only way to get through this life is laughing hard and constantly, mostly at myself."
— Shannon Hale

"I was under the stars, like a fish is under water."
— Shannon Hale

"Mama used to say, you have to know someone a thousand days before you can glimpse her soul."
— Shannon Hale (Book of a Thousand Days)

"Right now I'd like all my troubles to stand in front of me in a straight line, and one by one I'd give each a black eye. "
— Shannon Hale (The Goose Girl)

"What she had long believed was not true, and now the world was wide open to discover what was.
It is like all my life I thought the sky was green."
— Shannon Hale

". . . as long as there are movement and harmony, there are words."
— Shannon Hale

"I keep thinking about a tale my nurse used to read to me about a bird whose wings are pinned to the ground. In the end, when he finally frees himself, he flies so high he becomes a star. My nurse said the story was about how we all have something that keeps us down."
— Shannon Hale (Princess Academy)

"Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving."
— Terry Pratchett (A Hat Full of Sky)

"There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who, when presented with a glass that is exactly half full, say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty.
The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: What's up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don't think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass! Who's been pinching my beer?
And at the other end of the bar the world is full of the other type of person, who has a broken glass, or a glass that has been carelessly knocked over (usually by one of the people calling for a larger glass) or who had no glass at all, because he was at the back of the crowd and had failed to catch the barman's eye. "
— Terry Pratchett (The Truth)

"Changing the world is good for those who want their names in books. But being happy, that is for those who write their names in the lives of others, and hold the hearts of others as the treasure most dear."
— Orson Scott Card (Children of the Mind)

"Personal affection is a luxury you can have only after all your enemies are eliminated. Until then, everyone you love is a hostage, sapping your courage and corrupting your judgment."
— Orson Scott Card (Empire)

"Happiness is not a life without pain, but rather a life in which the pain is traded for a worthy price."
— Orson Scott Card (Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus)

"Armies have spent a lot of time and effort training their soldiers not to think of the enemy as human beings. It’s so much easier to kill them if you think of them as dangerous animals. The trouble is, war isn’t about killing. It’s about getting the enemy to stop resisting your will. Like training a dog not to bite. Punishing him leaves you with a beaten dog. Killing him is a permanent solution, but you’ve got no dog. If you can understand why he’s biting and remove the conditions that make him bite, sometimes that can solve the problem as well. The dog isn’t dead. He isn’t even your enemy."
— Orson Scott Card (Empire)

"No human being, when you understand his desires, is worthless. No one's life is nothing. Even the most evil of men and women, if you understand their hearts, had some generous act that redeems them, at least a little, from their sins."
— Orson Scott Card (Speaker for the Dead)

"Fairy tales, are more than true. Not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be defeated."
— G.K. Chesterton

"I've been making a list of the things they don't teach you at school. They don't teach you how to love somebody. They don't teach you how to be famous. They don't teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don't teach you how to walk away from someone you don't love any longer. They don't teach you how to know what's going on in someone else's mind. They don't teach you what to say to someone who's dying. They don't teach you anything worth knowing."
— Neil Gaiman (The Sandman Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones)

"Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly."
— Neil Gaiman (The Sandman Vol. 6: Fables and Reflections)

"Only the phoenix rises and does not descend. And everything changes. And nothing is truly lost."
— Neil Gaiman (The Sandman Vol. 10: The Wake)

"Being a detective isn't all about torture and murder and monsters. Sometimes it gets truly unpleasant...The fate of the world may depend on whether or not you can bring yourself to visit your relatives."
— Derek Landy

"There is never a time or place for true love. It happens accidentally, in a heartbeat, in a single flashing, throbbing moment."
— Sarah Dessen (The Truth About Forever)

"Life is an awful, ugly place to not have a best friend."
— Sarah Dessen (Someone Like You)

"Don't think or judge, just listen."
— Sarah Dessen (Just Listen)

"Love is needing someone. Love is putting up with someone's bad qualities because they somehow complete you."
— Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)

"No relationship is perfect, ever. There are always some ways you have to bend, to compromise, to give something up in order to gain something greater...The love we have for each other is bigger than these small differences. And that's the key. It's like a big pie chart, and the love in a relationship has to be the biggest piece. Love can make up for a lot."
— Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)

"It's all in the view. That's what I mean about forever, too. For any one of us our forever could end in an hour, or a hundred years from now. You never know for sure, so you'd better make every second count."
— Sarah Dessen (The Truth About Forever)

"There comes a time in every life when the world gets quiet and the only thing left is your heart."
— Sarah Dessen

"I am coming to terms with the fact that loving someone requires a leap of faith, and that a soft landing is never guaranteed. "
— Sarah Dessen

"Because this is what happens when you try to run from the past. It just doesn’t catch up, it overtakes … blotting out the future."
— Sarah Dessen (Just Listen)

"Some things don't last forever, but some things do. Like a good song, or a good book, or a good memory you can take out and unfold in your darkest times, pressing down on the corners and peering in close, hoping you still recognize the person you see there."
— Sarah Dessen

"Sometimes it seems safer to hold it all in, where the only person who can judge is yourself."
— Sarah Dessen

"Wherever you will go,
I will let you down,
But this lullaby goes on. "
— Sarah Dessen (Someone Like You)

"It was just one of those things," I said, "You know, that just happen. You don't think or plan. You just do it."
— Sarah Dessen (The Truth About Forever)

"Music is a total constant. That's why we have such a strong visceral connection to it, you know? Because a song can take you back instantly to a moment, or a place, or even a person. No matter what else has changed in your or the world, that one song says the same, just like that moment."
— Sarah Dessen (Just Listen)

"You can't always get the perfect moment. Sometimes, you just have to do the best you can under the circumstances."
— Sarah Dessen

"What is family? They were the people who claimed you. In good, in bad, in parts or in whole, they were the ones who showed up, who stayed in there, regardless. It wasn't just about blood relations or shared chromosomes, but something wider, bigger. We had many families over time. Our family of origin, the family we created, and the groups you moved through while all of this was happening: friends, lovers, sometimes even strangers. None of them perfect, and we couldn't expect them to be. You can't make any one person your world. The trick was to take what each could give you and build your world from it."
— Sarah Dessen

"I wondered which was harder, in the end. The act of telling, or who you told it to. Or maybe if, when you finally got it out, the story was really all that mattered."
— Sarah Dessen (Just Listen)

"It's a lot easier to be lost than found. It's the reason we're always searching and rarely discovered--so many locks not enough keys."
— Sarah Dessen (Lock and Key)

"Family isn’t something that’s supposed to be static, or set. People marry in, divorce out. They’re born, they die. It’s always evolving, turning into something else."
— Sarah Dessen (Lock and Key)

"It's just that...I just think that some things are meant to be broken. Imperfect. Chaotic. It's the universe's way of providing contrast, you know? There have to be a few holes in the road. It's how life is."
— Sarah Dessen (The Truth About Forever)

"I thought again how you could never really know what you were seeing with just a glance, in motion, passing by. Good or bad, right or wrong. There was always so much more."
— Sarah Dessen (Just Listen)

"So you're always honest," I said.
"Aren't you?"
"No," I told him. "I'm not."
"Well, that's good to know, I guess."
"I'm not saying I'm a liar," I told him. He raised his eyebrows. "That's not how I meant it, anyways."
"How'd you mean it, then?"
"I just...I don't always say what I feel."
"Why not?"
"Because the truth sometimes hurts," I said.
"Yeah," he said. "So do lies, though."
— Sarah Dessen (Just Listen)

"So many versions of just one memory, and yet none of them were right or wrong. Instead, they were all pieces. Only when fitted together, edge to edge, could they even begin to tell the whole story."
— Sarah Dessen (Just Listen)